mination on reaching London; the crossing over to the down-platform
and their immediate departure again, solely in obedience to her wish;
the journey all night; their anxious watching for the dawn; their
arrival at St. Launce's at last--were detailed. And he told how a
village woman named Jethway was the only person who recognized them,
either going or coming; and how dreadfully this terrified Elfride. He
told how he waited in the fields whilst this then reproachful sweetheart
went for her pony, and how the last kiss he ever gave her was given a
mile out of the town, on the way to Endelstow.

These things Stephen related with a will. He believed that in doing so
he established word by word the reasonableness of his claim to Elfride.

'Curse her! curse that woman!--that miserable letter that parted us! O
God!'

Knight began pacing the room again, and uttered this at further end.

'What did you say?' said Stephen, turning round.

'Say? Did I say anything? Oh, I was merely thinking about your story,
and the oddness of my having a fancy for the same woman afterwards. And
that now I--I have forgotten her almost; and neither of us care about
her, except just as a friend, you know, eh?'

Knight still continued at the further end of the room, somewhat in
shadow.

'Exactly,' said Stephen, inwardly exultant, for he was really deceived
by Knight's off-hand manner.

Yet he was deceived less by the completeness of Knight's disguise than
by the persuasive power which lay in the fact that Knight had never
before deceived him in anything. So this supposition that his companion
had ceased to love Elfride was an enormous lightening of the weight
which had turned the scale against him.

'Admitting that Elfride COULD love another man after you,' said the
elder, under the same varnish of careless criticism, 'she was none the
worse for that experience.'

'The worse? Of course she was none the worse.'

'Did you ever think it a wild and thoughtless thing for her to do?'

'Indeed, I never did,' said Stephen. 'I persuaded her. She saw no harm
in it until she decided to return, nor did I; nor was there, except to
the extent of indiscretion.'

'Directly she thought it was wrong she would go no further?'

'That was it. I had just begun to think it wrong too.'

'Such a childish escapade might have been misrepresented by any
evil-disposed person, might it not?'

'It might; but I never heard that it was. Nobody who really knew all t